Most Distant Course
by The Madmadam
Summary: Eighty years of loss and gain, a broken clock to Time's refrain.


Murphy is fifteen when she really starts to get skittery. Mainly with the dichotomy, still feeling just as ten as she has since the day he left, and on the other hand, listening to Professor Brand say she'd already be in college now if she would just apply herself to her schoolwork. Time is splitting, sprawling forwards and backwards at the same time.

She knows she internalized the mission the day her father left.

Time isn't on her side, either. Flat-chested and skinny and squinty, she seems forever stuck on a pubescent body that shows no sign of her current age except having somehow stretched to 5'3.

"—go over nuclear structure again today, and then perhaps we'll start applying that knowledge by moving on to nucleosynthesis." Professor Brand is telling her, the calculated pauses in his voice lulling her brain to inattention. "You're a quick learner, but I like starting small."

This is Brand's element, teaching. Even this time, with her mind on other things, Murph doesn't miss the emergence of crow's feet around his eyes from all the smiles in his thoughts. He looks older when he's teaching, a good kind of older. His face grows wrinkles like a tree grows rings, talking astrophysics like every fact is new and he's sitting down in his own classroom, joining his students for the journey of discovery.

Normally, Murph is fascinated by it. Normally, she listens. But right now she can't stop thinking about Tom getting married and that group of people in English class who have recently taken to calling her "Loony Tunes" every time she talks, waxing on the villanelle's fluid guidance over meter and rime, or the naturalness of iambic pentameter, or the cosmic necessity in _not_ going gentle. Soon her head is filling with digressions, all of them surging to confusion and—

"Professor Brand?" she blurts suddenly.

Nonplussed, he raises his head. "Yes, Murph?"

"Why is it so hard to make friends?" The question snaps out of her.

His mouth tightens in rumination. It intrigues Murph, the fact that nothing she says can startle him. She almost misses it. Her dad had startled easily; as she remembers his surprise at finding her stowed away for the coordinates, she almost laughs. Then again, it's better to not have reminders. To not spend every ion of time scrunching her eyes closed and creating chaos in her mind to make herself forget the math, how many days he'd been gone.

"There can be many reasons," he says after a minute. "Prejudice, disruption (or perceived disruption) of community politics and interpersonal dynamics, breach of propriety or some missed social cue, whether real or imagined. Can you be more specific?"

"Why—" her eyes dart away. "Why is it so hard for _me_ to make friends?"

"The others simply don't know how to talk to you," Professor Brand replies matter-of-factly. "You're too smart for them. You intimidate them."

"Yeah, well if they knew me, they'd like me." Murph mutters, kicking into the floor.

"Of course they would. People fear what they don't know, and they don't know you."

"They don't want to know me," her brow creases heavily in resentment.

Professor Brand goes silent again for a few seconds. "My daughter asked me the same question once."

Murph's eyes widen. "Amelia—Dr. Brand, I mean?"

He hums an affirmative, eyes leaving the room. "She was very headstrong, but in a different way than you. Strictly analytical, took things literally, and was quite… blunt," he chuckles, "as I recall. I was much younger then, with many fewer answers to give. I couldn't tell her anything she didn't have a counterargument for, and in the end I could only tell…" he swallows and continues, more to himself, "… tell her how much _I_ loved her, and would always love her."

"You're a good father," she says.

"Oh, Murph," his voice breaks. "I am not a good father at all."

"You didn't leave your kids."

"I did." He closes his eyes. Opens them again, despairing. "I allowed her to go on the mission."

"You _are_ a good father, Professor. You shouldn't say that about yourself. And I know about fathers—"

"Murphy." His tone sharpens.

Murph does stop, then, but only because she's made this point before.

"Maybe they should fear you," Professor Brand says with a twinkle in his eye. "In a few years you'll be a very powerful person, more powerful than any of them. Perhaps even you'll save lives."

Murph looks up at him, face etched in doubt.

He smiles. "You'll have your NASA badge then, and we'll be building more and more stations."

"Can I try to figure out the equation?" Murph asks eagerly.

Professor Brand doesn't answer.

Murph thought she'd been talking loudly enough, but she repeats her question.

"Yes, Murph, of course." He replies, turning away.

But she doesn't miss the draw of his skin around his suddenly tightened jaw, the slightly more labored breaths, and the glint of a tear in his eye.

"Don't worry about the equation, Professor," she says firmly. "It'll happen. I know it will." She ignores the fact that she can't technically _know_ it because she does know it. The ghost told her. Well, maybe it didn't say it in so many words, but it gave her the idea.

"Your father will be so proud of you." His voice breaks on the word _father_.

* * *

When Murph is 25, time is still sprawling behind her, but it stopped sprawling ahead. She's still a ten-year-old girl with a scab that scars and scars and scars but never goes away. But she's finally grown into her own head, and people no longer call her ahead of her years. She stopped being a prodigy years ago, after all, and people no longer proclaim she's advanced—or even mature—for her age.

She's about to graduate with her Masters in astrophysics.

 _Ignoring the dust, Murph swings the front door open and stomps over to the edge of the porch. For a while she has her quiet, but then she hears a door, footsteps, then quiet. Then more footsteps, louder until a figure walks in front of her and turns._

 _"Hey, Murph," Cooper squints down at her. Today the sun is as hot as the dust is dry. Cooper told her not to go outside today. A lot of it is in the air, he said._

 _But he doesn't seem mad._

 _She's five years old, stuck to the front of the house in the back corner of the porch, angry tears streaming down her cheeks._

 _"What's wrong?"_

 _"Tom said I can't beat him at thumb wrestling 'cos I'm a girl. I beat him, but he said I was cheating!"_

 _"Hmmm." Cooper looks out at the line where the corn turns into sky, mouth drawn, his arm tightening over his daughter's shoulder. Unhappy. "Sounds like he isn't being a good sport."_

 _"What's a good sport?" she asks._

 _"Someone who loses and doesn't raise a big stink over it."_

 _She giggles at the words he used._

 _"You know where Tom is?"_

 _"Out with Grandpa."_

 _"Well, the minute he gets back, I think he owes you an apology."_

 _"Where're you going?"_

 _"Huh?" he asks, looking briefly at her._

 _"When you walked past me now. Where're you going?"_

 _"Just to the store to buy some fish for Grandpa."_

 _"It'll close soon," she says. "Go."_

 _"Think I'll go tomorrow," Cooper grins at her. "Don't think I should be going out in all this dust, either."_

 _Taking the hint, Murph trudges back inside. Cooper follows her and latches the door shut behind them. "Sorry," she says._

 _Looking surprised, he stares back at her. "You did good, Murph. Why are you apologizing?"_

 _"You should go, not wait for Tom for me." She shrugs. "It was just thumb wrestling."_

 _Cooper turns to her, eyes soft, expression hard. "People are going to try to take your achievements away from you for a long time coming. Don't ever apologize for proving yourself."_

 _Murph doesn't understand what "achievements" are, despite being advanced for five, like Grandpa says. But she gets the gist from context._

Murph is familiar with a few of the things other students say about her. "She's only here because her mystery contact pulled strings," "She's only here because the university wants more female students," "She talks too much in class," "She never smiles," "She's too bossy," "I think serial killer when I see her," "She really comes off as fake when she gets enthusiastic in class," "I heard she totalled two cars," "I heard her dad went missing years ago," "She should be helping repopulate like everybody else, not be in university," "She talks to herself way too much," and Murph's personal favorite, "Why is she so surly?"

With the universities unable to take many students, Masters programs became coveted and ferociously competitive. With a bulging CV and a glowing recommendation letter from Professor Brand, whose name the university was asked to keep secret, she was accepted.

At least, she was accepted by the university.

Her fellow program students were another matter entirely.

God knows why they felt the need after they'd already been accepted into the program. Something having to do with the dreaded politics in academia, she told herself. It sounded right at the time.

Three years later she can't bring herself to care what the 'why' of it was, not when she's feet away from leaving them all behind forever.

Inches.

Millimeters.

She seizes the diploma, startling Dean Deborah Mitchell. But when she uses her last second at the podium to lock eyes and flash up a sheepish, contrite grin, Dean Mitchell appears to understand.

After the ceremony, Murph greets the Professor with a rare embrace. Her tired face launches into a smile, the first real one she's had all day. She knows she doesn't have to practice her smile for NASA, since going there is going home. There, she will be truly happy.

"After all that work and stress, you must be feeling exhausted!" Professor Brand chortles, and there's a streak of pride beneath the astonishment. "All graduate students hate their degrees upon first accumulating them. They're always sorry until they get a good night's sleep."

"I'm not sorry, even after all that," she says, and upon checking and confirming its veracity, feels effervescence fill her to her toes.

He notices. Smiles, though he's trying not to cry. "Then you, Murphy Cooper, are a very special individual." With that high praise, he leaves, and Murph is assailed by a wall of congratulations from behind.

She turns and beams.

Tom and Lois have made it, after all. Little Cooper, too.

Today is a day for hugs. Tom holds his arms open. "The day you beat me at thumb wrestling, I knew you could do anything you wanted."

Murph gazes at him, taking this in.

He shuffles his feet. "Dumbass," he mutters for good measure, that same lazy grin on his face.

She barks with laughter. " _There_ you are."

That's all they need to say, really, except that Grandpa should have been here to see this. And in the space where they all fall short of words, Murph rolls her newfound declaration around in her mind, delighted. _I'm not sorry._

Tom and Lois exchange a look and retreat, leaving Murph to her rumination.

"Okay, Dad," she mutters. "Step One completed. What other golden advice do you have for me?" And steadily she grows younger and younger as she resurrects him for analysis.

* * *

For the longest time Murph doesn't have an inkling that the ten-year-old orphan is here to stay.

It occurs to her when she's 35.

Getty is rubbing her bare shoulders.

"You fucking son of a bitch," she seethes out suddenly.

There's an image in her head that Getty doesn't see, and he must think she's talking to him. She hears him leap back and her shoulders are suddenly cold.

"I'm sorry," she flinches. "I didn't mean you."

Eyes wide, Getty attempts to process this. "Uh, then, who—?"

"My dad." She blinks. "Just thinking about my dad."

"Oh." He sits down next to her again. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It's just that, this morning at work, I was trying hard to concentrate and I still got so stuck in the past, like I was ten again, and I think." She bites down on her lip. "I wonder if that feeling will ever go away."

"Murph, it takes time—" he begins to protest.

"I think I'm stuck with it," Murph nods sharply. "I think that a part of me is always going to be that ten year old girl screaming for her dad to come back." Wiping her eyes, she continues. "I'm sorry. I said I wouldn't talk about it anymore."

"How can you expect to concentrate when you sleep four hours a night?" Getty murmurs, and Murph can hear the frown. "And as for the other stuff, how are you supposed to recover from something that you'll never know is finished, you'll never have closure on? Something that just keeps coming back to remind you?"

He's trying to help. Murph knows that. But it just reminds her all over again that she doesn't have an answer. "Don't say never," she replies.

Getty sighs softly but tiredly. "Murph."

"I'm trying." Her voice breaks. "Please just know I'm trying."

His hands find her upper back, pressing knots out of it. "Of course I know that."

"When I was a kid, these books would fall off my bookshelf. And behind the bookshelf I thought I heard a voice, not saying something I could understand, just... yelling. Since today, I think it's been trying to tell me that I'm part of this story. Dad's. I always used to think it was telling me to break away, to make my own story, my own life."

"But working at NASA... does that even count as different? I mean, your dad—"

"Is gone." Murphy's voice goes flat with impatience. She didn't anticipate being interrupted so soon for a question. "This is my own story. _He's not here_."

"But he's here." He taps the back of her head.

"Yep. Most of the time. I…" she shakes her head. "This shouldn't even be bothering me still. But I keep getting these little reminders, like my birthday yesterday, and they're driving me insane. At first I was ready to just brush them off like I always do. But today..." she trails off.

The hand on her back stops moving, but stays. Through Getty's fingers she feels something akin to a dream, a realistic one that blurs the line between wake and sleep. A dream that could so easily be a memory she's blocked out and labled fictitious. "Go on," he says quietly.

"Right before he left, Dad repeated something Mom said: 'I look at the kids and see myself as they'll remember me. _It's as if we don't exist anymore_.' I remembered it today, for some reason, and I thought about Dad being gone and wondered if he thinks of himself like that, not existing anymore. Hell, maybe he doesn't even _think_ anymore. Maybe he's in cryosleep. Maybe he's dead." She bites her lip before continuing. "And it makes me think maybe the voice—I called it a ghost—maybe it's doing the opposite, drawing me back into Dad's mission instead of pushing me away from it. I thought the ghost was comforting me after Mom died—and then after Dad left—but maybe it's the one that's scared." Murph turns to Getty. "This isn't over, and my part in it isn't over."

Eyes cloudy and forehead delicately wrinkled, Getty lets the silence stay for a minute.

"I'm going to be this little girl, forever," she continues softly. "And what scares me is this feeling that she's got the answer, and I have to get back to her to fix this. Brand might not have the equation solved in time."

"If there's an answer, you'll find it," Getty finally says. His expression is familiar, the lines of his face set as they always are after he gathers his words.

The words themselves, however, are not familiar.

Murph purses her lips and gazes at him thoughtfully. Getty is careful not to speak of that which he isn't sure of, make promises he can't keep. This is a clear breach of his nature. She tries to smile. "Not very scientific of you, is it?"

"Fuck that," he replies levelly.

Hearing this from someone so analytical and composed sends Murph into laughter. But there's a tightness in his expression. NASA isn't getting its research done fast enough.

"You're a part of this story, too." Murph takes his hand, crisp from wearing latex all day, between her even dryer ones. "Maybe that's somebody's way of saying this," she gestures between them, "is right."

"I'm sure it is," he replies. To anybody else, the quiet of his voice might have implied dismissal. But anybody else doesn't see his index finger curl around hers.

* * *

At 45, Murph gets a little scared. It's mostly gone, the stuff about still being a little girl inside. Giving birth to a child kind of convinced her once and for all that she herself isn't a child anymore. The one on the way makes her even more sure, and the problems she's up against now are not the problems of a ten-year-old girl. They're adult problems, like morning sickness in the third trimester, Getty's obsession with piling on night shifts and running himself into the ground, Tom's drinking—

"Mom?"

Murph stands. "Yeah, Don?"

"Cooper's on his way."

Her lips twist into a wry smile. Pure irony. Don never knew his cousin's namesake. Or his own, for that matter.

Analyzing her expression, Don shifts from foot to foot and says, "You're not mad anymore?"

That's difficult to gauge. Fifteen minutes ago she was cussing and slamming things. "I just want to see Tom again. That's all." Murphy knows full well the danger in being too honest with one's children, talking to them like they're adults. But she can't resist it.

Just like her father couldn't.

"Cooper said five minutes, trouble with the car, sorry," Don recites with a concentrative frown and half-absent eyes.

Hands clenching at her sides, Murph tries not to think about how late Cooper already is and how buying them the only car on Cooper Station was a huge mistake and all the vomiting she's done today and all the cleaning she _hasn't_ done and the steady thumping in her abdomen.

Next time she and Getty are adopting for sure.

Banishing those thoughts, she notices how much Don has started to look and talk like Getty in just six years. She's still in that frame of mind by the time Cooper comes in, and she notices that he's got the round, soft eyes of his father, dark like his mother's. There's still an awe in surveying him. Even after leaving Earth, his lungs were so bad that nobody thought he'd make it long enough to be standing here now. "How old are you, now?" Murph finds herself asking.

"Eighteen." His eyes spark. "Not going to get to farm like Dad did which is a shame I guess. Last generation farmer, first generation food engineer."

Murph smiles. "The station needs people like you. It's going to be to be a while before we get to another planet."

"Yeah. It's too bad we don't have soil here and have to grow in labs, Dad says, but I prefer the new way. Cleaner. Don't tell him I said that, though."

"I won't," she promises, remembering that Tom can be every bit as stubborn as she can. Cooper—Senior—had handed that quality down to both of his children.

"Thanks."

"Where is he?"

"He's in the car taking a nap. He," Cooper's eyes dart to Don, "had a little to drink before coming."

Murph's smile freezes. "Oh."

"He's happy to see you, though," Cooper adds quickly. "It's just because of the farming. Him not being able to do it anymore."

Turning to her son, she says, "Don, go get Uncle Tom, please." When he's gone, she lowers her voice. "Are you and Lois all right?"

"We're fine. Just… happy that he's visiting you."

Don returns holding Tom's hand, taking no notice of his slightly watery and bloodshot eyes.

Leaning forward, Cooper murmurs, "It helps." Then he walks to Don and kneels in front of him, saying, "C'mon, squirt. Let's catch up," and ushering him out of the room.

"Really, Tom?" Murph snaps. Maybe she should be nicer, but she doesn't have the patience for it.

"I didn't ask for any of this," he gestures weakly around, "this _space_ shit. So what if the world was ending for us? I should've been right there with her."

Murph's head rolls forward. She sighs. "I know it's been hard for you, Tom." Leaving Earth, living on a space station. The transition hit them all hard.

"It's been seven years," Tom chortles through his teeth and nods. "That's what you're going to say. It's been seven years, and it's time to move on. Well, Murph, what if I _can't_?"

There's no answer to this. Standing, frozen, glad she's looking at the ground so she doesn't have to see her ghost of a brother. Could save the world, but couldn't save him. The only thing she can think to do is hug him, so she walks to where he's standing at the door and holding it open with his back on the frame. Something about his closed-off posture makes her pause, though, and instead she ruffles his already messy hair and says, "Let's go on a walk."

Murph doesn't know whether or not he wants to as she's guiding him back outside, but she decides that isn't relevant. A nice long walk will do him good, whether he likes it or not.

"How much you drink?" she asks him as they settle on a footpath.

"Dunno," he mumbles. Already, walking is helping. The slur is gone from his voice, at least, even though it's still present in his step.

"Dumbass." She smiles over at him. "You used to call me that all the time, remember?"

"I did?" Tom grins. Doesn't apologize.

"Yeah, we fought a lot."

"Guess brothers and sisters do sometimes." It's sarcasm, but not the malicious kind.

"Yep. I realized I never called you a dumbass. Dumb, and an ass, but not a dumbass. Just wanted to see what it would feel like."

Snickering, Tom asks, "Good, right?"

"I guess."

"So…" he looks at her stomach, "how long until this one comes?"

"A month," Murph scratches the back of her neck. "It wasn't planned."

"Few things are," his eyes haze in the late afternoon light.

"Nobody plans on getting pregnant at 44," she continues. "Eight months in, and I'm still not used to it."

"Yeah, well, it's pregnancy. It won't ever let you get _un_ used to it."

She laughs, appreciative, until she hears something in what he says. An analogy. "Do you think Dad's coming back?"

Tom turns his head away to the side, surveying the clean horizon. "You always ask the hard questions, don't you?"

Murph moves to wipe dust off her sleeve. Then she remembers where she is.

Or, more aptly, where she isn't.

"Well, the mission's not over," she begins, "so it won't ever let me get unused to it. Similar thing."

"What do you want, Murph?" Exasperation seeps into Tom's voice. "Dad gave you the equation. You figured it out and saved everybody. What will give you closure?"

Shaking her head, Murph mutters, "I don't know. It's just… he told me he'd come back. And it's been ten years today since we solved the equation and I guess… I thought it would be done for him when it was done for me. He saved us all—"

"You saved us all."

" _We_ saved us all," she continues, frustrated at the interruption, "and that's why he went, so I guess I thought that that would be it for him and he'd come home."

"Maybe he's having trouble."

"He's been having trouble this whole trip. It wasn't supposed to take this long."

Tom doesn't respond, and when Murph looks over at him, his mind is clearly somewhere else. "I used to get upset over leaving Jesse back on Earth," he says quietly. "Mom and Grandpa, too, but especially when they're your own…"

Murph nods, biting her lip.

"It's hard. Letting a child go. Letting two of them go… it must've been really rough for Dad. I know he misses us every bit as much as we miss him. And sometimes," his eyes go back at Murph, "you have to let go, like Lois says. And before you say that's giving up on him, it's not. It's just preparing ourselves for the reality that he might never come back. If he does come back, great. But we can't wait for him."

Tears prick at her eyes. "I know, Tom. And I'm not waiting for him. I just wish he could see all of this. I mean, he's saved us, he's done so much, and he doesn't even get to see all that he's done. He might not ever get to meet our children."

"Hey, come here," Tom pulls her in for a clumsy hug, and Murph is left to support both their weight since he's still too drunk to stand still, but she doesn't care. For the first time in years, she has a big brother again.

And she's ten.

Shit.

"Don't put yourself through this, Murph." His voice goes hoarse and she knows he's crying, too. "You do get to see what you've done and have everybody love you for it. You're not letting go of Dad if you let go of the expectation to see him again. We'll always remember him. We'll always love him. That doesn't change whether he comes back or not."

She does let go, since as it should be. Murphy knows once and for all that her father had saved them, not abandoned them. There's 95% of closure right there. And the other 5% that's up there with him, that's gotten easier to forget about amidst a budding family of her own. Sometimes, when a book topples off the nightstand, she surges up from halcyon for a split second, forgetting that time has rescinded its threat of killing them all.

But that's it.

* * *

Not until Murphy is 55 does she stop including her dad in the futures she pictures.

It's not that she _thinks_ he's gone, since such a thought would be absurd. But she hesitates before saying for sure that he'll be here to see the birth of her grandchild.

And forever after she lets the silence win.

Don Cooper shoots down the front stairs of their house followed soon after by Amelia who's screaming "Fight me!" at him and pounding her little fists on his arm despite his reminders that he's too big to fight her.

"Dad?" Pat fidgets, waiting for him to go break it up. Anxious and vacillating, she's nothing like her calm namesake. She only looks a little like her, with her black frizzy hair.

The late Mrs. Cooper could settle matters like a pro.

Little Tom is feeling ill and sleeping, so Getty clears the stairs and shushes frantically. He is their second adopted child. Both have signs of it: Amelia with her blonde hair in a non-blond family, Tom with a weak immune system Getty constantly frets over.

The children quiet down after that, but it's a tense kind of quiet. Amelia sneezes. Pat shushes her frantically. Murph is almost sure she saw spit.

"Is the healing process this sacred to you?" She stiffly asks Getty in an undertone.

"When someone is sick, someone is sick, and she or he needs _rest_." He turns a page in the magazine he's reading.

Murph pokes the magazine on the side he's reading.

He looks up at her before his eyes dart over to the kids. Don is murmuring to Pat while Pat shovels Amelia's constantly wandering hands into her lap. He utters the magic words: "You're not in trouble."

Amelia grins and barrels back up the stairs, Pat quickly following her to supervise.

"Just please keep it down for your brother!" he raises his voice after her.

Murph's eyes twinkle briefly. Then they fall on her son still lying on the floor, propped up on one elbow, grinning at them. Quickly she begins to read Getty's magazine.

"I see nothing has changed since I left," Don says.

"Don't read that as an excuse to visit us even less often," Murph replies coolly.

A sigh. "Mom—"

There's a pause, exactly as if Don is looking at his father to see if he'll back him up. Motherhood provides a person very peculiar wisdoms.

"It has been a while, Donald," Getty says. "A year?"

"I'm figuring things out," Don replies, voice steeling. "I'm just figuring things out."

"You've been out on Doyle Station for a year," Murph replies, "and called us once. A day ago. Where have you been staying over breaks? What have you been doing? Why haven't we been able to reach you at _all_?"

"I'm trying to do it on my own."

"Then you're being very dumb." Murph snaps. Getty's fingers close lightly over her wrist. Soothing. She turns briefly to him before readdressing Don. "People aren't supposed to be alone, and the people who are actually _are_ would tell you not to throw it all away."

"Throw what away?" his blank stare sparks her temper further. He truly does know nothing of being alone.

Of failing to contact his loved one until long after it's too late.

Murph draws a steady breath. "Friendships. Families."

We just want to hear from you, Don," Getty puts in, "or be able to reach you. We know you can take care of yourself, but nothing stops a parent from worrying. It's more for us than it is for you."

The wrinkles in Don's brow linger for a second or two. Then they morph into smile lines. "OK. I hereby surrender to the guilt trip. I love you guys, but I just have to get out—"

Murph springs up from her chair, waits for him to stop speaking. "Don't do it on my account," she mutters low, before walking out of the room, stepping around Amelia on the stairs, and collapsing on her bed. She wants to prick the dark fuzzy spikes on Little Tom's head and relish the chance of doing it all over again, the diapers, the bandaids, the soccer lessons, the heartbreaks.

The leaving.

In an hour she'll talk to Don, make things right, really make things right. 45 years have taught her the consequences of staying silent for too long. Right now she can only cry for her firstborn child as he used to be, small and precocious. Having inherited his mother's brilliance and his father's motivation in school, he graduated last year, and he would have gone on to university if Cooper Station or Doyle Station or any of the other stations had them. Instead he did what most of the smart kids did nowadays, found a smart adult and became an apprentice to him.

At sixteen.

Soon he'll be seventeen.

Soon he'll be eighteen.

Soon he'll be leaving.

 _Leaving_.

* * *

They're in the hallway after seeing the school play Amelia starred in. Most of the audience has left, and there's something about being in a school at night that is magic to Murph. Her eyes twinkle bright in the empty space, where just a minute ago the last of the audience was filing out, littering the floor with playbills. A few other parents of the performers are around, waiting for their children to get out of makeup and come find them. Amelia shuffles by soon enough, but it takes her a while to recognize them because she could not take her glasses on stage. When she does, though, the whole room lights up. "Mom!" Amelia cries, and hugs her, far sweeter than her namesake.

Then again, she could have been named for Amelia _Earhart_. Problem solved, Murph thinks with a smile. She doesn't have to think any better of Dr. Brand, even if her daughter's affability is infectious.

Amelia pauses, biting her lip. "What would've Uncle Tom thought of it?"

Murph recoils at the question. Her brother and Amelia had been quite close, but he'd died almost four years ago.

Back then, and any mention of Tom, she'd grieve steadily. They had grown close over the last few decades.

Hearing it now makes her think about being 65.

It makes her think of grudges she's been holding like weaponized air, ready to be dispersed in beads of heated words. Naming her child Amelia had been complicated, and she still has complications with it. She'd wanted to honor Professor Brand, and the best way to do that had been through his daughter, whom he loved.

Murph can't hold a grudge against Professor Brand, and she _won't_ hold a grudge against Amelia Brand, she swears to herself. Not if it's going to infiltrate her bond with her daughter and tint it with undeserved scorn, or enable her to hold onto anger that age should have taught her to manage.

Puzzled by the silence, Amelia repeats the question. "Mom?" she prods after a second silence.

"Uncle Tom would have loved it," Getty jumps in with a smile.

"Really? You're not just saying that?" Amelia's voice takes on a doubtful note. She's perceptive.

"Yes, he would have," Murph responds, forcing her thoughts back to the present. "Tom never much liked to read, but I remember Dad turned him onto Steinbeck. He never got past the novellas, though. Never got around to reading _The Grapes of Wrath_ , so he wouldn't be able to predict what was coming in your rendition of it. He would've watched it, and yes, he would've loved it. The Dust Bowl would've felt real to him."

Appearing satisfied with this answer, Amelia grins the grin of a thousand nights. "What did you think, Mom?"

"I thought it was very well done," she says, and opens her arms, eyes clouding when Amelia is behind her vision. A few too many memories. It set the air on fire and filled her with a tangible halo of nostalgia and pride that could at any second melt into tears.

Getty sees this, and in a rare show of physical affection joins the hug, laying his head across Murph's.

And Murph knows what she thought, and she knows what Tom would have thought, but another question gnaws at her mind.

 _What would Dad have thought?_

After separating they dissolve into chatter, Amelia asking Getty, "And what did you think, Dad?"

"Very good," he smiles.

"Only you can't imagine how they lived with the dust destroying their lungs like that and all the germs," she says with a teasing glint in her eye.

"Naturally." Getty takes the bait.

He hugs Amelia again and then she bubbles on with adolescent fervor, leading them out of the building.

The drive seems short enough as Amelia recounts her favorite moments in the performance. She beats them to the house by about thirty feet and tugs impatiently at the knob. Getty thrusts open the front door, breathless, as she skips in and goes right to her room.

Getty allows Murph to enter first. As she's about to turn, he grabs her elbow. "Do you want to get married?" he asks, leaving the door ajar.

Murph's first answer is no. There simply aren't resources for extraneous things like marriages, not in a new society perched atop stars. Murph thinks she can remember a time when living in space was glamorous to people, not just a parade of problems approaching long-term survival therein.

"What've you been up to?" She asks suspiciously.

"There's an old guy in the station closest to ours—Doyle Station, where Don is—who used to work in a courthouse back on Earth. Marriage licenses. Still does." he says, voice more halting and stilted than usual.

As it turns out, marriage is even less realistic than she estimates. Family life, as always, will fill their hands with new things to do, leaving no room for excess events. Life will get in the way. When Murph and Getty will finally find the time a few months later, the man will have died.

But it's the thought that counts, and it's the thought she'll remember as she rakes her fingers through Getty's silver hair and embraces him now, throwing her head up to the sky through the open door. And when she remembers she has friends there, she smiles tearlessly.

* * *

No matter how many times and how loudly she promised herself she wouldn't, Murph ultimately is helpless to the nostalgia sinking through her bones. It's an old people disease; all old people get it. That's what Getty tells her, anyway. Sweet little old Gepetto of a Getty, reminding her that she's not a freak and she's entitled to her feelings for thirty years straight.

She's 75 and unacceptably sentimental.

The pale vellum skin over her veins and breakaway bones brings back a time of high stakes and high praise, exploration, battering physics in a black hole and walking away, unscathed, with the glory, along with a foot off the ground for everybody else.

And, goddamn it, she's ten again.

Now that NASA's whisked both of everybody's feet off the ground and into a space station, she can't think of herself as old, not when everything around her is new.

The mission lingers far, far beneath her eyes, and it's harder to know now whether it wasn't all a dream. She remembers her father firmly by face and name and smell. When people left the Earth, Earth's smells left them in turn. The interior of a space station doesn't smell like anything, so Murph clings to her old repertoire of scents from younger days.

What does her father look like now?

Does it _matter_ what he looks like now?

She's lived a full life with people who have been present throughout it. Twenty years ago, she would have wanted her father to know everything about her life. It felt like she was including him. Yet the journey is echoed tenfold in the destination, and Murph is fine with her destination. Maybe now she's an old woman near the end of her life, but she could tell stories about the places she'd been and the thing she'd done, having been there, having done them. And whoever didn't believe them or didn't know about them, didn't matter. _She_ knew. She could track every event in her journey that lead to the destination, and could bask in the destination thereof. Like the lone tree that fell in the silent forest, she is fine simply knowing things herself. Nobody needs to see it for it to have happened, or for it to have happened any more grandly.

Not even her father.

No, all she wanted from Cooper was to see him one last time. And even then, if she didn't, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

For her father is memory, a ghost of Murph's future, just as he'd said. His story, whatever it is, is spiraling away from hers just the same as hers is from his. He is a lone tree in his own forest, and when Murph finally passes, there will be nothing left here for him.

She also remembers a man and woman named Brand. The man had been old, far too old to bring herself to hate. But the woman was young, and should have known better than to take his hidden truths and run away with them.

And whisk off a good father, on top of it all.

Cooper hadn't known: Murph's sure of that now. The 65-year-old feel of his arms and the promise of returning, those told her all that she needed to know. He was a good father, for the 10 years she had him and the 25 years she had the essence of him through books in the wall.

For all the years she'd tried not to, Murph loves Professor Brand more than ever. For a long time, he was all she had, and during those times, he, too, was a good father.

And good fathers didn't allow their only daughters to be sacrificial lambs or go into space on a suicide mission.

That's why Amelia Brand had to have known.

Every time Murph thinks it, though, there's a catch in her thought processes, like it's wrong, or she's oversimplifying it, or she's letting her biases rule over good judgment. Now she allows her mind to be sucked down that path, the possibility that Amelia Brand really didn't know, that Professor Brand was, indeed, a bad father.

It doesn't bother her nearly as much as she thought it would. Age gifts Murph a thicker skin, along with an idea: why not love everybody? It's easy for her to, since Professor Brand is the only one who has really wronged her and she couldn't ever bring herself to hate him. The others, Brand and Cooper, never having known the truth, will fall into place from there. She'd remember what she had with them, forget about what she didn't. Murph is far too old to be thinking about everything she _hasn't_ done, anyway. There's too little time to do those things now.

"M?" Getty's thin voice floats over to her from the porch. "What are you doing in there?"

"Thinking." She hobbles out and falls into a chair next to his. "I forgot to rinse the plates again last night. Now I'll have to let them soak."

"The day I met you, I knew you were trouble." he responds, his shaking hand going to clasp hers.

"Tell me how that story goes." Her serene gaze goes to his."The tenth time you snuck Professor Brand out of his room when I said expressly that he could not go anywhere and risk opening up his wounds from surgery."

"He told me he felt just fine."

"He'd just had a bypass, M. Do you know how easily complications arise, especially with the primitive machinery we had back there on Earth?"

But Murph is laughing, remembering, and Getty still can't bring himself to talk over her.

 _Thick afternoon air hits Murph as she walks down a corridor in the hospital, and she knows it'll be even hotter at ground level. 'How can the Professor stand being cooped up in this?' she wonders as she first looks around, then knocks quietly on Brand's door._

 _"Come in." His voice sounds feebler than it normally does._ _"Ah, Murph," he continues after she scurries in and sends him a secretive smile. "Here to rescue me?"_

 _"Yes," she whispers. "Sorry I'm a little late."_

 _"No worries." He starts to get out of his bed. "How is_ _—_ _"_

 _Murph places a finger to her lips, which the Professor heeds, as she opens the door a crack to peek down the hallway._ _But instead of white walls, she is greeted by crossed arms and the clearing of a throat._

 _"Uh," she begins, "Hello, Dr. Getty."_

 _Getty tightens his lips in a smile that more resembles a wince and continues past her into Brand's room. "Professor Brand, please. You aren't supposed to be moving, or asking others," here he eyes Murph askance, "to come sneak you out."_

 _"Dr. Getty, please, I'm fine."_

 _"We'll see if that's true soon enough. Now you have to take care of yourself. Please lie down and try to avoid disturbing your wounds further." He leaves the room, turning back to Murph as soon as he shuts the door. "Miss Cooper." He nods crisply, his mouth taut and tugging downwards._

 _Murph gestured back at the door with an apologetic grin. "I only needed—"_

 _"Professor Brand is in no condition to go anywhere. I know that you and Professor Brand are quite close and that understandably you are concerned, but he can't leave until his wounds are healed."_

 _Murph's smile fades. Her temper flares. "Even on his own request?"_

 _Getty's frown deepens. "With all due respect, Miss Cooper—"_

 _"Murph," she corrects._

 _"M—Murph," he stumbles, adjusting his collar, "Neither you nor he are medical doctors, as brilliant as you both are, and his judgment suffers if he thinks that frolicking around the centrifuge and letting his wounds open up and/or get infected will do anybody any good. If you truly have his best interests in mind, you'll stop encouraging these escapades right now."_

 _"Maybe this escaped you, but Professor Brand is working on a project that is time-sensitive—"_

 _"I know about the equation, Miss Cooper."_

 _" Murph!" she repeats heatedly._

 _" Everything here is time sensitive. We all have our jobs to do, and as long as the healing process is deterred, the Professor's work will suffer."_

 _Eyes narrowing, Murph ponders this. "How long?"_

 _"I—" Getty shakes his head. "I don't know. A couple of weeks, but if there are complications—"_

 _"How long until he can receive visitors?"_

 _"We want to monitor him for the next few days. I'll let you know."_

 _"Professor Brand has been asking for his work," Murph persists._

 _Getty sighs, long, rubbing a hand down his face. "Healing is his main job right now, but I don't see how a little bit of work will harm him, as long as it doesn't interfere with his rest. If you get it to me, I'll get it to him, Miss Coo—Murphy," he corrects himself._

 _Now there's a little smile back on her face. Someone had to inherit the Cooper charm, and goodness knows it wasn't Tom. "When can I come by?" she asks._

 _"Uh… anytime, really."_

 _"Anytime?"_

 _"Anytime," he repeats, blinking._

* * *

"You always were such a good sport, Getty," Murph's eyes crinkle in delight. "What did you think when I rammed the car into the cornfields and set them on fire?"

This gets her a few odd stares from the other people here. Ignoring them, Murph waits for his response.

Silent, he is thinking.

"Or when you had to wait for me when I was in my old room? When I ran out with Dad's watch and Tom was coming at you. What were you holding? I can't remember."

"I was thinking what I'm always thinking, that I'll follow you anywhere," he replies. Voice a whisper, face smooth.

"You never left me. You were the only one who never left me." Closing her eyes, Murph braces herself for the lifetime of memories. Even at 85, crying makes Murph feel stupid.

"Maybe we should go."

"I'm fine." Murph draws back, biting her lips so they stop quivering. "I'm an old woman. I don't have to worry about what people think."

"Is it still too soon, Mom?"

"No, Pat." Murph surveys her timid daughter, summoning the strength to compose herself. "It's just going to be difficult for a little while." The reluctance to cry is the only part of her that never grew up. It reminds her of throwing watches and refusing to cry, and amidst the memories _—_ Tom, Professor Brand, Dad, Mom _—_ she is helpless to her tears.

A pair of arms wraps around her curved frame. With a little imagination, the memory of rough leather, corn, and sweat, a drawl…Even now she feels ten years old.

"Are they looking at me?" she whimpers to a shoulder and a curl of dark hair. "I don't want them looking at me."

The shoulder shifts, accommodating a quick scan of the area. "No. No one."

Rubbing a hand across her eyes, Murph pulls away and turns back to Getty. "I love you."

This time there is no movement from within the stone, now or two minutes from now. Murph traces her finger along the letters of his name, thoughts inscrutable, and then pushes herself up with her hands on her knees, Pat helping her, for the short walk back.

Lois and Cooper Jr. are here in the cemetery too. They hurry down to the sidewalk and fall into step behind them. Cooper Jr. coughs and tugs Murph's sleeve.

Murph snaps around with a scowl.

Everyone stops.

"No," she barks simply, and if she had a cane like Lois did she'd wave it close in front him so he could feel the wind of her threat. She continues home, gripping Pat's elbow probably too tightly. She is not going to deal with her father today. Or any of his namesakes.

Nevertheless, her feet drag to a stop.

The last time she said she wouldn't deal with her father, she didn't see him again for three quarters of a century.

"What do you want, Coop?" Murph asks. Her voice whips behind her, audible even though she doesn't turn to face him.

"I'm so sorry. I know that he'll never stop loving you," he calls. Then, just as abruptly, he turns and helps Lois retrace their steps to Tom's grave.

Murph is frozen, this time from shock. He'd been talking about Getty, obviously, and she knows that, but nevertheless—

 _"I love you. Forever, you hear me?"_

The words crack through her mind like black dust on the horizon. 75-year-old words, words she'll probably never hear again. One hand, still over her knee, begins to clutch and collect skirt fabric. Tears form rivers down her creviced face. _I love you too, Dad,_ she thinks. _And I don't need you here as proof you meant it._

She goes home. Stoicly tells Pat she's doing fine. Brings her back nearly as soon as she leaves, clearly concerned despite the assurances. Hugs her. Thanks her for sticking it out with an old woman and taking care of her for the past ten years. Proceeds to love her and the rest of her kids and their kids with everything left in her.

* * *

"Mom!" four voices chorus out. Lois and Cooper hang back, equally thrilled but hesitant.

Murph opens her arms to Pat, first in the door with the groceries, Don who nearly crushes her, Amelia who squeals as if she's young again, and Tom who smiles shyly and rushes out of the hug, and then Cooper pushing his mother forward for an extra kiss. It's Lois who brought them here together, after all, with a feeling that she'll be dying soon. She's ninety-nine, so she doesn't sugarcoat it. "Cooper, you've got your wife and Jesse and that food engineering job, and you're getting too old to be asking me to help you with everything," she'd told him, and repeats now.

They all laugh.

The name doesn't send Murph into a tailspin anymore, but she still wonders where her father is.

"Tom used to do that, God bless him," Lois continues. While it's not in her nature to be talkative, age and family have opened her up. "Scolding us to tell us we didn't need to worry."

"When I was about to take my driver's test, he saw I was worrying and took me aside and said," Cooper chuckles, "'You're too smart to get worried over a little thing like driving."

"Or right before his first surgery, telling me 'Why are you crying? You've got everything all figured out!'" Lois spoke again. "He was so stubborn, but he had a good heart."

"We'll never stop missing you, Aunt Lois." Amelia squeezes her hand. With her other she squeezes Murph's, conveying the same message. Love glares off her lively blonde hair.

With the two old ladies in the room mollified, the conversation turned to simpler topics like NASA's progress in finding another habitable planet, or the latest ingenuity of Cooper's food production line, or Don's balding hair. While Murph's mind is sharp for an old woman's, it roams. Murph never had much luck forcing herself to listen when her mind was already occupied, even in her more willful childhood days. So when her thoughts wander, she allows it, feeling them leaving the room and shooting up, cutting a clear path through the sky. Most days it feels like they're taking something with them, a heart or a lung. Today, as always, she closes her eyes and braces herself right as the thoughts start leaving, flying. But this time when she opens them, returning to the interior of her eponymous station, she still feels her full weight in the chair.

"Do you think he's ever coming back?" Lois asks her suddenly. They're sitting in the kitchen, and the others are gone. Probably on a walk.

Murph tries to shrug, but her shoulders are too stiff. "Do you think you're going to make it to a century?"

"Just a few months to get there," Lois began, "but you know what, Murph? I don't want to."

She laughs in response.

"No, really. If I get to a hundred, I'll feel invincible. Then I'll be wasting every one of my days after that, not living life to its fullest. I have to know that I'm going to die someday, and if I make it to a hundred, it'll make me… forget."

The laughter stops. Murph gazes at Lois, sobering, waiting for her to continue.

"I want to die when I'm really, really happy. And right now…" she looks down at her hands and laughs, still reserved after all these years. "I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. We got off a planet that was killing us, my son who was going to die ended up living, and here we all are now, more of us than when we started, so lucky."

Murph tips her head up to survey the scene out the kitchen window, to where the sky would have been on Earth.

"When do you want to die?" Lois asks her. Perhaps from someone younger it would've felt like intrusion. Between two primeval women on borrowed time, it didn't.

"I can die," she pauses to cough, "today. I've lived a life that makes me more content than I'd ever thought I'd be. I don't need his opinion to validate that."

Lois doesn't speak, and for once, she doesn't lower her eyes. Murph reads her face. What to most people is a sag of wrinkles, to old people is a map, the brow lines rearranging themselves into an octogenarian code. Scrutable to one who'd lived that age herself.

Lois is expectant.

Murph sighs before sharing this truth with her, but at 95 years, she's too old to be alone, and Lois is too old to tattle. "I used to want his opinion on everything, Lois. Before I had my own family lined up, I couldn't stop thinking about it. They've saved me. Over time I stopped, and it became easier to analyze the situation with some distance."

With no great effort, Lois rolls her eyes. Scientists, she's probably thinking.

"I love my father, and I always will. But I haven't known him for the past 85 years. Our lives aren't even in the same galaxy anymore. There's no reason we need to know everything about each other's lives." Murph raises her watch hand. "He's always been with me. I know that he saved us, like he was meant to, and that's all I need to know about him. Hopefully, when he sees what I did, he'll know everything he needs to know about me."

Disappointed, Lois looks downward again.

"But," Murphy adds, "he did say he'd come back. I don't need anything from him. Nevertheless, I want to see him one last time."

Beaming at her, Lois says, "I knew it. I knew you hadn't given up on him."

Puzzled, Murph asks, "Why are you so concerned about this, Lois?"

"Because after Jesse," she wipes the corner of her eye, voice controlled yet emotional, "Tom was devastated. He started talking about his father again for the first time in years. Nothing else helped, I felt like I didn't know him, I didn't know what to do—so I told him he had to let Cooper go. I didn't think much of it until you solved the equation, and then I thought I was wrong."

Murphy's face folds into a concentrative frown, an old expression that's out of practice ever since she retired from astrophysics work. "Given the circumstances, I don't blame you."

"It's just good to know that you haven't given up on him. It's haunted me for all these years. I know he's going to come back." Tears grow fuller in her eyes.

In less than 24 hours, Lois will die in the upstairs guest room. Everyone will have a good cry over it, but after that, they'll be all right.

In about four years, they'll all be reunited once again at Murph's own deathbed, Don standing at her left, Pat crouching at her right, Amelia at the foot, Tom shifting diffidently in the back. They and their children and their children's children will fill the room with their murmur of chatter, and then the door will open.

She doesn't quite dare imagine who will be behind it.

It could be her nurse.

It could be her father.

* * *

 **Title is taken from Tagore's Song XII, a poem whose story greatly resembles Interstellar's. Read it… it's glorious.**

 **Ultimately, I wanted to write a story about healing, speculating how Murph went from being the angry abandoned teen to the passionate astrophysicist to the serene old woman who only needed a minute of her father's presence for closure, and then bridging those. The existence of triggers got me thinking about how an event like this could really warp someone's mental health-trying to heal from an ongoing event with no closure, being reminded of her father every step the mission progresses, even when those steps occur years apart... each step taking her back to square one, the helpless ten-year-old girl who couldn't stop her father from leaving. I found it interesting that she doesn't do well in school (probably more Cooper's fault since he got her suspended), so I extrapolated this to her continuing education.**

 **Getty, to me, was the most fun character to write, since we don't get a lot of him in the movie. It felt like I was excavating his character, which was great fun.**

 **One of my biggest fascinations with the _Interstellar_ script is Murph's address at the end: "Ms. Cooper." This is a deliberate, precise choice of words, and to me it implies this: 1) Murph entered a civil union with the father of her children, but never married him; 1a) Marriage itself is probably considered one of the "extras" in this generation. Civilization really only builds once people have addressed the hardship of survival… and since Earthlings must readdress this in Interstellar, worrying about meeting basic needs like feeding everybody, marriage was probably not an option for many people during this transitioning period; 2) Murph never got a PhD or doctorate in her field of study; and 2a) Whether she had any collegiate education at all is open to interpretation. Murph probably learned most of what she knew from Professor Brand, being his protegee. Besides which, the problem of Earth becoming quickly inhabitable is obviously time-sensitive, so I'm guessing that the people at NASA couldn't really be picky or selective about the educational background of its workers - not with the end of the world looming on them. That said, Murph is doing some pretty sophisticated work at NASA, so I thought it'd be fairly realistic if she were to have a Masters by that point-especially if she could do one of those one-year accelerated programs. On top of that, she's thirty-five years old, which would have given her plenty of time to go to school.**


End file.
